sábado, 24 de septiembre de 2011

ArchaeoHeritage - Palaeolithic finds in China's Shenyang area

Now, archaeologists are a group of people who certainly get close to nature, and a few of the tenacious scientists have made a new discovery in Shenyang, capital city of northern China's Liaoning Provence. The new find dates the city's human history to some 30,000 years ago.

A project to find out the human conditions in the Shenyang area back in the Palaeolithic era has been underway since April of this year. The project is a joint study by the Shenyang Archaeology Research Center and the Frontier Archaeology Research Center of Jilin University.

During a recent 15-day outdoor investigation, 1,029 pieces of stoneware were unveiled at 14 Palaeolithic sites. Excavated pieces include gallets, stone hammers, and scraping tools and so on. Researchers say this finding fills in the blanks from previous studies of the Shenyang area going back some 10,000 years, and serves as authentic proof of the existence of a human culture 20-to-30-thousand years earlier than the city's recorded history.

Professor Chen Quanjia of Frontier Archaeology Research Center, Jilin University said, "We now know that there existed at least 3 stoneware machining patterns in the Shenyang area. This finding is grouped with the stoneware found within Liaoning Provence and the northeastern area. It will contribute to the understanding of human evolution regarding culture and communication."

Previous studies of Chinese cultural relics have shown Shenyang to be a significant area with archaeology value. Already contributing some 1,000 relics from 100 sites, the city is doing more to better preserve them including opening a brand new archaeology base in Xinle.